1592 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1592.

Events

• February 5–7 – Ulysses Redux, a Latin play by William Gager, is staged by members of Christ Church, Oxford. Two days later, they revive Gager's 1583 Latin play Rivales (now lost).
• February 26 – The first firmly recorded performance of Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta is given by Lord Strange's Men in London.
• June 23 – The London theatres close and apart from a brief spell around January 1593 remain so for about 16 months due to an epidemic of bubonic plague.
• September 3 – The English writer Robert Greene dies in London of a "banquet of Rhenish wine and pickled herring", ^[1] having apparently completed Greene's Groats-Worth of Wit (published soon after), including a reference to "an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers", taken to be the first published (critical) reference to Shakespeare as a playwright.
• September 26 – Rivales is performed again by members of Christ Church, with Queen Elizabeth I of England in the audience, during her second visit to the University of Oxford.
• October–December – Pembroke's Men, an English playing company, is known to be in existence, acting in Leicester and at Court in London.
• November 9 – The Sixto-Clementine Vulgate is promulgated. ^[2]
• December 18 – An entry in the Stationers' Register may refer to Marlowe's Doctor Faustus , perhaps marking the year of its first performance.

New books

Prose

• Antonio Agustin – Dialoghi intorno alle medaglie inscrittioni et attre antichità, with woodcuts by Geronima Parasole (the first known printed book with illustrations by a woman)
• Isaac Casaubon – New edition of Theophrastus's Characteres
• Blaise de Montluc (died 1577) – Commentaires de Messire Blaise de Montluc
• 'P. F.' (translator) – The Historie of the Damnable Life, and Deserved Death of Doctor Iohn Faustus
• Robert Greene (died September 3)
  • The Black Books Messenger
  • A Disputation Between a Hee Conny-Catcher and a Shee Conny-Catcher
  • The Third and Last Part of Conycatching
  • Greene's Groats-Worth of Wit, Bought with a Million of Repentance
  • Greene's Vision, Written at the Instant of his Death
  • Philomela
  • A Quip for an Upstart Courtier
• Muhammad al-Idrisi (died 1165) – De geographia universali or Kitāb Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī dhikr al-amṣār wa-al-aqṭār wa-al-buldān wa-al-juzur wa-al-madā’ in wa-al-āfāq
• Richard Johnson – Nine Worthies of London
• Lucas Janszoon Waghenaer – Thresoor der Zeevaert (Treasure of navigation)
• Hieronymous Megiser – Dictionarium quatuor linguarum
• Anonymous (possibly Thomas Kyd) – The Murder of John Brewen
• Wu Cheng'en (died 1580/2; attributed) – Journey to the West (Xī Yóu Jì) ^[3]

Drama

• Anonymous (variously attributed to Thomas Kyd, William Shakespeare and/or Christopher Marlowe) – Arden of Faversham (published)
• Anonymous – A Knack to Know a Knave
• William Gager – Ulysses Redux (Latin)
• Thomas Kyd – The Spanish Tragedy (undated first printing, almost certainly between October and December in this year; first performed around 1587; first recorded performance November in this year)
• John Lyly – Gallathea and Midas published
• Christopher Marlowe – Edward II
• Thomas Nashe – Summer's Last Will and Testament
• William Shakespeare – The Taming of the Shrew (approximate date)

Poetry

• Henry Constable – Diana
• Michael Drayton – The Shepherd's Garland
• Gabriel Harvey – Foure Letters and certaine Sonnets

Births

• January 16 (baptised) – Henry King, English poet and bishop (died 1669)
• January 22 – Pierre Gassendi, French philosopher and scientist (died 1655)
• March 28 – John Amos Comenius (Jan Amos Komenský), Czech teacher and writer (died 1670)
• April 4 – Abraham Elzevir, Dutch printer (died 1652)
• May 8 – Francis Quarles, English poet (died 1644)
• July 10 – Pierre d'Hozier, French historian (died 1660)
• August 1 – François le Métel de Boisrobert, French poet (died 1662)

Deaths

• July 22 – Ludwig Rabus, German Lutheran theologian (born 1523)
• September 3 – Robert Greene, English writer (born 1558) ^[4]
• September 13 – Michel de Montaigne, French essayist (born 1533) ^[5]
• September 26 (burial) – Thomas Watson, English lyric poet writing in English and Latin (born 1555)

References

1. According to Thomas Nashe.
2. Metzger, Bruce M. (1977). "VII The Latin Versions". The Early Versions of the New Testament. Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 349.
3. Yu, Anthony C., ed. (1977). The Journey to the West. Vol. 1. University of Chicago Press. p. 14.
4. Joachim Küpper; Leonie Pawlita (6 August 2018). Theatre Cultures within Globalising Empires: Looking at Early Modern England and Spain. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. p. 22. ISBN   978-3-11-053688-1.
5. Hutchins, Robert Maynard; Hazlitt, W. Carew, eds. (1952). The Essays of Michel Eyquem de Montaigne. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. twenty–five. Trans. Charles Cotton. Encyclopædia Britannica. p. v. He had his son awakened each morning by 'the sound of a musical instrument'